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A doctor fined for "advertising" abortions has presented a petition with 150,000 signatures to Parliament, demanding Germany's law be changed. Kristina Hänel says women have the right to information about the procedure.
Kristina Hänel and her supporters hold a sign with the number of signatures they have collected

Doctor Kristina Hänel handed over the petition with more than 150,000 signatures to members of Germany's Bundestag on Tuesday, urging them to scrap paragraph 219a of the criminal code.

USA -The effect of a documentary: Charlotte, NC
Dec 12, 2017
by International Campaign for Women's Right to Safe Abortion

Care in Chaos, a documentary by the US feminist news wire, Rewire, recently received the “Best Documentary Short” award from the Nevada Film Festival. It examines how policing practices and policies in Charlotte, North Carolina and Fargo, North Dakota impede or facilitate access to reproductive health care. Providers throughout the country work every day to serve patients, often under siege from an anti-choice movement driven by ideology and disrespect for women’s lives. As Care in Chaos shows, local authorities can make the difference in whether women can obtain critical care.

Right after the documentary’s release, they write, they saw real policy action. The city of Charlotte revised its sound permits to stop anti-choice protesters harassing patients and staff with loudspeakers and amplifiers. Now it’s easier for women in Charlotte to access comprehensive reproductive healthcare.

A woman believed to be the first in Brazil to ask the state for permission to end a pregnancy that did not result from a rape or involve medical issues has had an abortion — in Colombia.

With one request denied by the Supreme Court and fearing that another would languish in the justice system, Rebeca Mendes told The Associated Press on Monday that she decided to have the procedure done abroad so as not to be punished in Brazil.

The decision ends her involvement in a case that garnered national headlines in Latin America's most populous nation and sought to push the limits on restrictive abortion laws.

The abortion debate in Ireland mostly reinforces the opinions of your peer group “rather than convinces the opposite party to change their position”, Finnish academics have concluded.

Researchers from the University of Eastern Finland checked parliamentary records and online news sources, including blogs, to analyse how abortion was debated in Ireland and Finland. The abortion law in Finland is more liberal, with terminations available in most circumstances up to 20 weeks.

The Oireachtas committee on the eighth amendment is likely to vote in favour of abortion without restriction in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy when it agrees its final report on Wednesday.

Committee sources say there appears to be a majority in favour of accepting the recommendation of the citizens’ assembly that termination of pregnancy, without restriction, should be lawful up to 12 weeks’ gestation.

Amnesty International Ireland may face a criminal investigation for refusing to return money donated by a fund backed by the philanthropist George Soros.

The human rights organisation has been told to pay back €137,000 from Open Society Foundations, to ensure that Ireland’s abortion laws comply with human rights, by the Standards in Public Office Commission (Sipo). Amnesty has been campaigning for the repeal of the Eighth Amendment.

Taboo No More? Abortion in South Korea
Responding to a public petition, the Moon administration will take a close look at the current abortion ban.

By Clint Work
December 09, 2017

In August, the Moon administration announced it would publicly respond to any petition posted to the Blue House website that received more than 200,000 signatures. On September 30, a petition emerged calling for the decriminalization of abortion and legalization of abortion pills, based on a woman’s right to her own body. By late October, the petition surpassed the threshold required for public comment, and (as of this writing) has received a total of 235,372 signatures. In a video posted November 26, Blue House Secretary for Civil Affairs Cho Kuk offered the government’s response.

Cho said the government would conduct a fact-finding study next year to accurately determine the status of abortion in South Korea, gather public opinion data on the issue, and examine the reasons behind the criminal ban on the practice. The last such study, conducted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, occurred in 2010. Although previously carried out at five-year intervals, the funds apparently were unavailable in 2015 under the administration of Park Geun-hye.

In the heat of a late September day in Mozambique, southern Africa, we started filming a meeting of young charity volunteers. They had poured heart and soul into an ambitious project aimed at combating HIV and spreading a message about contraception in the province of Gaza.

Then, out of the blue, and as our cameras rolled, came an unexpected announcement: the volunteers' work was to end because of a new policy from the United States.